Chicken Meatloaf with Onion Rings

Meatloaf has to be one of my favorite go-to comfort foods ever but I think the almighty loaf gets a bad rep sometimes.  I guess a solid, brick-like texture with a blanket of grease on top isn’t appealing to some.  Well that doesn’t appeal to me either so I came up with this less guilty version that uses ground chicken instead of beef.

Meatloaf Ingredients 

1 tbs olive oil, 1 carrot finely diced, 1 celery finely diced, ½ onion diced, 2 garlic cloves minced, 2 tsp herbs de provence,1 tsp paprika, salt and pepper, 1 lb ground chicken, 1 egg, ½ cup + breadcrumbs (I used panko), ½-2 tbs soy sauce, 1 8oz can tomato sauce

Worcestershire sauce, bacon (optional)

1. Add the first five ingredients to a heated oiled pan. 2. Sauté the vegetables until they are soft and translucent. 3. Next add your seasonings (salt, pepper, herbs and paprika). 4. Once you’ve let this mixture cool for a while, add the veggies and egg to a bowl with the ground chicken. 5. Now add a couple of dashes of the Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce and roughly half of the can of tomato sauce. 6. Incorporate the ingredients and add the breadcrumbs. 7. The mixture should be moist but not soupy.  If the mixture is soupy and wet add more breadcrumbs.

Instead of a loaf pan, I opted to use muffin tins.  This cuts the cooking time down a little bit and it’s also useful when I want to freeze a few meatloaf muffins for later.  Plop (this is a technical term, of course) a couple of mounds of meat into each tin and top with a little piece of bacon.  Bake in a 375-degree oven for about 30 to 35 minutes.  If you’re into sauces, about 25 minutes in add any tomato sauce mixture of your liking.  I’ve used a ketchup, brown sugar and mustard mixture before.  

To send this meal over the edge, I fried up some crispy onion rings to lay on top of the meatloaf.  As for the mashed potatoes at the base of my meal, those came from some Chicken Out leftovers.  I wish I had that recipe for you.

Onion Rings

½ onion finely sliced into rings, flour, buttermilk, hot sauce, seasoned salt, paprika